Flat panel video displays, such as plasma televisions, LCD displays, and the like, are becoming very popular. As a result, flat panel video displays are used in a wide variety of viewing areas from family rooms to boardrooms. Many manufacturers are accordingly entering into this segment of the market with many different models of video displays that have different shapes and sizes.
It is often desired to measure the view angle performance and total light (e.g., the total luminous flux) emitted by such video displays in order to characterize each display's performance. One conventional process for measuring visual displays includes taking “spot” measurements with a spectroradiometer or other suitable spot meter at a number of different portions of the display. During such measurements, it is possible to measure view angle performance by rotating or moving the visual display relative to the spectroradiometer. A number of separate spot measurements can be taken of various points on the visual display to approximate the view angle performance of the particular display. Although this conventional approach can generally provide the necessary measurement(s) with a sufficient degree of accuracy, this process is far too slow for production applications. Furthermore, this method requires an assumption that the visual display under test is spatially uniform (i.e., has a uniform brightness and color across the entire display). Most displays, however, are not spatially uniform. For research and development applications, often a high amount of spatial resolution is required. This type of measurement is impractical because of the enormous amount of time that would be required using a spot measurement device to measure thousands of locations on the visual display. Accordingly, there is a need to improve the systems and methods for measuring spatial and angular performance of visual displays.